Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

This grant is for clean-room equipment critical for UBC's fabrication research efforts in the nanotechnology area.  Two metrology tools will enable the precise characterization of the novel materials and devices: 1) A Thin-Film Measurement System allows us to determine the thickness and optical properties of thin-films, such as photoresist, semiconductors such as silicon, insulators such as oxides, transition metal oxide superconductors and polymers.  2) A stylus-based surface profilometer enables measurements of topology where the thin-films are opaque (e.g. metals), transparent, or for characterizing the depth of surface etches.  The automated XY stage provides mapping of the wafer to characterize etching uniformity, as well as to determine the thin-film stress.    This grant is also for upgrades of two equipment: 1) upgrade to the ECR plasma etcher to add SF6 gas, which enables the selective etching of GaAs over AlGaAs and etching of Si, and 2) upgrade to the Rapid Thermal Anneal equipment with control software to improve reproducibility, robustness and usability, for annealing metal contacts on our devices.    Several research programmes will be supported by this grant: 1) We are designing and fabricating a new device, a Transistor VCSEL, which is the integration of a high frequency Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor (HBT) with a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL).  This revolutionary semiconductor laser transmitter technology will increase the capacity of optical communication networks, and enable inter-chip optical interconnects;  2) Nanofabrication of Photonic Crystal devices; 3) Semiconductor material research for optoelectronic applications, superconductor transition metal oxides; 4) Carbon Nanotube devices; 5) Si Nanowire devices; 6) Polymer gas sensors; 7) Implantable sensors; 8) Neural probes; and 9) Lab-on-a-chip systems.